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“I owe you,” Agnes said.
Lisa Livia shook her head, a little sadly. “No, I shoulda done this a long time ago. Besides, you’re putting on my kid’s wedding. I owe you. I—” She stopped as they heard two sets of car doors slam, and she got up and craned her neck to see who was coming around the corner of the house through the porch screen. “Oh, God, it’s Evie and Maria,” she said after a moment, dread in her voice. “I gotta eat crow here and get my kid her white wedding back.”
“No, wait.” Agnes shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose and stood up, too. “I think I can do it. Let me do the talking this time. My trade for you getting me the stuff to blackmail your mother.”
“That’s fair,” Lisa Livia said, and then she put on a smile as the screen door opened and Maria came in, followed by Evie with a dress bag over her arm.
Dress bags, the new hot accessory, Agnes thought, and plastered a smile on her face as she thought fast about how to get rid of the flamingo theme.
Maria said, “Evie called me to meet her here. She has a surprise to show us.”
Evie looked like six kinds of hell. “I’ve come to apologize. Palmer scolded me last night for being overbearing and rude, and he was right. If Maria wants a flamingo wedding, then she should have a flamingo wedding.” She reached for the dress bag and unzipped it.
“Well, actually,” Maria said, looking jolted.
“I think we can talk about that,” Agnes said, stepping forward. “I’m sure we can compromise?—”
“I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth,” Lisa Livia said.
“So I went to my dressmaker last night, and we worked on the dress,” Evie said as if they hadn’t spoken, pulling a lot of pink fabric out of the bag again. “Maria, would you please try Brenda’s wedding dress on for us?”
Maria took a deep breath and look the dress, which looked a lot lighter, and went inside, detouring into the housekeeper’s room. “Really, Evie,” Lisa Livia began.
Evie turned to her. “I did not appreciate what you said to me, Lisa Livia, but if someone had spoken to my son the way I spoke to your daughter, I would have felt the same way. I apologize, I sincerely do.”
“Oh, don’t,” Lisa Livia said miserably. “I apologize. I was completely out of line.”
“We’ve been talking,” Agnes said. “And we’re really both sure Maria will be fine with a white wedding. We think you were right to insist on something classic, like daisies and butterflies, Maria has always loved those, maybe with tiny flamingo accents and then a flamingo groom’s cake?—”
“No, no,” Evie said. “A girl should have the wedding she wants. I made a mistake. I was glad to spend last night fixing it. My dressmaker is a genius. You’ll see.”
“Oh,” Lisa Livia said.
Agnes looked at Lisa Livia and knew she was thinking the same thing: How do you tell a woman who has stayed up all night and spent a small fortune in dressmaker overtime fees that the flamingo thing was a joke her future daughter-in-law played to teach her a lesson about meddling?
Agnes and Lisa Livia looked away from each other and shut up.
“So have you talked to Maisie Shuttle?” Evie said to Agnes, after they’d discussed the weather and hoped it would hold for the weekend, and how the weatherman was predicting that it would, and how the gazebo was certainly looking lovely.
“Who’s Maisie Shuttle?” Lisa Livia said.
“Florist,” Agnes said. “Not yet, I’m still getting her machine. Don’t worry. Maria will have her flowers, which I’m thinking will still be white, with maybe tiny pink accents?—”
The screen door slapped open, and Maria came out in Brenda’s dress, but it was Brenda’s dress reborn, the hoop skirt and lace overlay gone along with the meringue sleeves and poufy overskirt and all the other froufrou. It was still flamingo pink, but lighter. Evie must have soaked it forever to rinse out part of the dye and now the cut was streamlined and strapless, with just an edge of netting along the top of the bodice, the skirt still full but with a crinoline not a hoop. Maria looked lovely. Pink as all hell, but lovely.
“That really did take you all night,” Agnes said, looking at all the work that must have gone into just removing fabric.
“I wanted to apologize today,” Evie said. “I didn’t want Maria to think I wasn’t... I didn’t want her to feel... I...” She looked at Maria. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me. After Brenda and I went to lunch yesterday and talked, I?—”
“Brenda,” Agnes snarled, imagining what that lunch had been like, Brenda dripping poison into Evie’s ear.
Maria took a deep breath. “Thank you, Evie, this is a beautiful dress and I’ll think of you when I walk down the aisle.”
Oh, hell, Agnes thought as she heard somebody walk through her kitchen. “You know what would make this dress perfect? An all-white backdrop with just tiny pink accents?—”
Maria turned to her eagerly, and then the screen door from the kitchen slapped and Brenda stepped onto the porch, invading from the house. “Well, here I am, Evie,” she said, looking like she hadn’t slept well. “What was so important?” She caught sight of Agnes and smiled, looking predatory. “Agnes, sugar, you had the front door open again, and you know that’s bad for my clock, so I just closed it for you. And you’ve got a big ol’ truck coming across the bridge, too. Is that a good idea?”
“It’s about time you got that clock out of my hall,” Agnes said, and watched Brenda’s face sharpen, and then a beat later, she thought, A truck? The bridge can’t support a truck. “No,” she said, and started for the door, only to be blocked by Brenda, staring at Maria’s dress.
